In my continuing series of IBM at 100, I turn to our data processing heritage with the IBM 1401 Data Processing System (which was long before my time).
While the IBM 1401 Data Processing System wasn’t a great leap in power or speed, that was never the point. “It was a utilitarian device, but one that users had an irrational affection for,” wrote Paul E. Ceruzzi in his book, A History of Modern Computing.
There were several keys to the popularity of the 1401 system. It was one of the first computers to run completely on transistors—not vacuum tubes—and that made it smaller and more durable. It rented for US$2500 per month and was touted as the first affordable general-purpose computer. It was also the easiest machine to program at the time. "The system’s software," wrote Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum, “was a big improvement in usability.”
This more accessible computer unleashed pent-up demand for data processing. IBM was shocked to receive 5200 orders for the 1401 computer in just the first five weeks after introducing it—more than was predicted for the entire life of the machine. Soon, business functions at companies that had been immune to automation were taken over by computers. By the mid-1960s, more than 10,000 1401 systems were installed, making it by far the best-selling computer to date.
A New Generation of Computing Architecture
More importantly, it marked a new generation of computing architecture, causing business executives and government officials to think differently about computing. A computer didn’t have to be a monolithic machine for the elite. It could fit comfortably in a medium-size company or lab. In the world’s top corporations, different departments could have their own computers.
A computer could even wind up operating on an army truck in the middle of a forest. “There was not a very good grasp or visualization of the potential impact of computers—certainly as we know them today—until the 1401 came along,” said Chuck Branscomb, who led the 1401 design team. The 1401 system made enterprises of all sizes believe a computer was useful and even essential.
The Evolution of Computers
By the late 1950s, computers had experienced tremendous changes. Clients drove a desire for speed. Vacuum-tube electronics replaced the electro-mechanical mechanisms of the tabulating machines that dominated information processing in the first half of the century.
First came the experimental ENIAC, then Remington Rand’s Univac and the IBM 701, all built on electronics. Magnetic tape and then the first disk drives changed ideas about the accessibility of information. Grace Hopper’s compiler and John Backus’s FORTRAN programming language gave computer experts new ways to instruct machines to do ever more clever and complex tasks. Systems that arose out of those coalescing developments were a monumental leap in computing capabilities.
Still, the machines touched few lives directly. Installed and working computers numbered barely more than 1000. The world, in fact, was ready for a more accessible computer. The first glimpse of that next generation of computing turned up in an unexpected place: France. “In the mid-1950s, IBM got a wake-up call,” said Branscomb, who ran one of IBM’s lines of accounting machines at the time. French computer upstart Machines Bull came out with its Gamma computers, small and fast compared to goliaths like the IBM 700 series. “It was a competitive threat,” Branscomb recalled.
Bull made IBM and others realize that entities with smaller budgets wanted computers. IBM scrambled together resources to try to make a competing machine. “It was 1957 and IBM had no new machine in development,” Branscomb said. “It was a real problem.”
Worldwide Accounting Machine (WWAM)
During June and July 1957, IBM engineers and planners gathered in Germany to propose several accounting machine designs. The anticipated product of this seven-week conference was known thereafter as the Worldwide Accounting Machine (WWAM), although no particular design was decided upon.
In September 1957, Branscomb was assigned to run the WWAM project. In March 1958, after Thomas Watson, Jr. expressed dissatisfaction with the WWAM project inEurope, the Endicott proposal for a stored-program WWAM was given formal approval as the company’s approach to meeting the need for an electronic accounting machine. The newly assigned project culminated in the announcement of the 1401 Data Processing System (although, for a time it carried the acronym SPACE).
The IBM 1401 Data Processing System
The IBM 1401 Data Processing System—comprising a variety of card and tape models with a range of core memory sizes, and configured for stand-alone use and peripheral service for larger computers—was announced in October 1959.
Branscomb’s group set a target rental cost of US$2500 per month, well below a 700 series machine, and hit it. They also decided the computer had to be simple to operate. “We knew it was time for a dramatic change, a discontinuity,” Branscomb added. And indeed it was. The 1401 system extended computing to a new level of organization and user, driving information technology deeper into everyday life.
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